Three's Company (1977 to 1984)

Been watching this on PLUTO TV , oh man what a funny show

John Ritter is amazing and has me laughing non stop

I even like the show without Chrissy though it does fall a bit, but I don't know if that is necessarily due to Suzanne Somers leaving or the show going into its 6th season.The show did pretty much have a basic plot line lol


I love the Roper's and prefer them to Furley, though I do love Don Knotts, but the Roper's just brought mpre to the show, Furley was the male version of Chrissy pretty much

 

Guilty pleasure for sure!

Suzanne was good but i think Pricilla Barnes was better, she could do physical comedy and had great timing.
this is that weird period they were phasing out Jenilee Harrison and they were both on the show, also Larry killed it

 

One of the most consistently funny shows ever. It hit popularity right as puberty was hitting me so it became one of my favorite shows. It waned a bit near the end but was still funny.

 

I have the entire series on DVD. John Ritter was one of the comedic greats right up there with Lucille Ball, Carroll O'Connor, Redd Foxx, Bob Denver, and Carol Burnett. The only other show that could have rolling on the floor in painful laughter is "All In The Family".

 

I never liked Don Knotts. I don't think he was ever funny.

But, the era of bra-less women...

 

Man, unwatchable by humans. I know it was huge in the ratings and made the careers of a couple of the participants, but I thought it was awful. I think I made it through 2 episodes in the 1970s before saying, "nope, not for me." It exceeded my stupidity threshold.

I totally get that John Ritter and Suzanne Somers had considerable charisma and looked great on camera. And it's very hard to argue with a show that was #1 for years and years. But I don't think shows like this hold up well today.

 

The seasons with Somers are really the best ones but it's still pretty good afterwards.

I think even if Suzanne Somers had stayed part of the ensemble, there would have been some sort of decline eventually. Like you pointed out, it's essentially the same basic plot line.

I'm a fan of Don Knotts and I don't even watch the Andy Griffith episodes after he left. I also prefer the Ropers. I think they got a raw deal with that own show situation.

 

I think I remember watching a bit of season 2 in my second year of college, and still finding it funny, which surprised me. I absolutely loved it as a kid, but, surely, I'll grow to find it corny, eventually...right?
What will always be an unwavering opinion for sure, though, is that I absolutely love the way the theme song evolved and got a funkier intro (amd even outro, I think) for the first four or five seasons.

 

I've always liked this show. I bought the complete series on DVD a couple years back.

The Ropers were my favorite landlords, though Furley could be funny too. And I preferred Priscilla Barnes to Suzanne Somers. I've later found out that Priscilla didn't really enjoy her time on the show, but I've never really found out why.

 

The producers were sexist, according to Somers, Barnes, and Joyce DeWitt. Ritter was treated differently than the female leads. Somers claims - and some of her costars have backed her up - that the producers enjoyed punishing her and treating her like a “bad little girl” - when when was going through her contract negotiations.

Some of the episodes - particularly later in the run - are weak. But some of them are great examples of farce - watch the one where Jack’s roommates think he’s romancing Helen Roper’s elderly aunt. It’s hilarious. Or the one where Jack and Janet think Terri has brought a mental patient to their apartment. Ritter was a very, very talented guy. And DeWitt was an underrated straight man who was very versatile when she had the chance to be.

 

This tells be that people aren't allowed to be sexual creatures.

 

As Susanne Sommers and her husband Alan Hamel found out, she was never the star or real focus of the show. It was the sum of its parts with John Ritter being the real star. The producers calling their bluff for more money only proved it.

And, I always thought Joyce DeWitt was hotter.

 

Maybe you just saw it from a different perspective? For us straights, the fun part was living a guy's fantasy, but frustrated about not being able to do anything about it, and having to fake being something you're not to make people feel comfortable. The progressive part is showing how far America had advanced in its social acceptance circa the late 70s, this show, and another ABC TV show "Too Close For Comfort".

 

But, at the same time, Sommer's co-stars were annoyed by her plot to get more money than them.

 

The innuendos on the show are dated for sure and no one could get away with that in the present day but the fact that no one was having sex on the show made it OK in a way I guess. It was talked about but nothing ever happened. Also, the man always got punished if the women were ever treated badly.

 

Not where I hang out.

 

Well I meant like on TV not real life...haha.

 

Episodes with Cindy were my favorites.
The dvd set is wonderful.

 

They were annoyed by her negotiating tactics - negotiating in season, not showing up for taping, badmouthing the show in the press, etc.. But Ritter had a favored nation clause in his contract, so if Somers got a raise, he would get more. It’s one of the reasons the producers gave for not giving her a raise; they claimed they couldn’t afford it for all three.

Somers negotiated poorly and managed to alienate most of the cast and company. But in principle, she was right. The show made over a half billion dollars in syndication, and it was an independent production, so there was no studio to gobble up a chunk of the profits. The lead actors deserved a piece of that. The three of them should have negotiated together, a la Friends. The producers could replace one of the women, but not both and not Ritter.

Instead, they never saw any of the back end. Ritter did get points in Three’s a Crowd, but it only ran a single season and was not the syndication monster that the parent series was. Producers Don Taffner and Ted Bergmann got very rich off of the series, though.

 

I haven't seen it in years but I do remember watching it again in college when it went into syndication in the mid-80s and I thought John Ritter was brilliant. I would probably cringe at all the jokes now, but Ritter doing physical comedy was great.

 

I always thought it was terrible. This and Married with Children are two popular shows that I will never understand why anyone would care for them.

 

I saw a few episodes when it was first on and that was enough. Suzanne Somers’s breasts weren’t enough reason to keep watching. Always felt a hit sorry for Norman Fell and Audra Lindley. They were spun off being told that in Great Britain the spinoff lasted longer than the original. It didn’t here. They were also promised if it didn’t work in a year, they could come back to “Three’s Company”. When the show was canceled, the deadline had passed. Lindley didn’t have much luck earlier in her career. She was on a hit sitcom about an inter faith marriage “Bridget loves Bernie” but protests led to a cancellation after on year (I doubt the protests were about the fact it was mostly mediocre).

 

I watched it a lot when I was growing up thanks to my brother being a big fan of the show. I think my favorite episode is the one where Jack has to go to a party (on an island maybe). He takes a drug to help him not be anxious due to the helicopter ride. Of course he starts drinking and it's some of the best physical comedy I've ever seen.

 

saw that the other day was laughing hard